Long story short, I noticed the CPU voltage was reporting itself as 1.512V in CPU-Z and the Biostar software within W7 64. I'm unsure why as the voltage hasn't been reading that high and the BIOS showed it 1.488V. I decided to revert back to profile 1 (which was the default settings of the BIOS with the exception of AHCI being on). Once I hit F4 to save, the speaker attached to the motherboard beeped 5 times, paused, then beeped 5 times. The PC then restarted and I got the logo screen. I was shortly greeted with a BSOD with the code of A5 and a message that the BIOS doesn't support ACPI. The following quote is from here[/quote]:

Quote:

A "Stop: 0x000000A5" error message typically indicates that the computer BIOS is incompatible with the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) standard that is supported in Windows Vista. However, this error can also occur because the computer hardware, the peripherals, or the drivers for those devices are incompatible with Windows Vista.

Needless to say, the BIOS supports ACPI so clearly something is wrong with the BIOS.

The problem is, I can't fix the BIOS. I can get into the BIOS and I can change whatever I want but, there is no option to upgrade the BIOS.

That being said, I can get to the BIOS flasher by pressing either Ctrl+Home or F12 repeatedly during boot. Once I am there though, the flasher tells me it "can't find any FFS" on the CD. This is because the CD I burned wasn't bootable. However, when I use a CD that is bootable, the flasher tells me "no BIOS files found".

To answer the questions that are going to be asked:

Have you tried using the default BIOS settings? Yes.
Did it help? No.

Did you reset the CMOS/remove the battery/set the jumper pin to clear? Yes.
Did it help? No.

Did you rename the BIOS file to AMIBOOT.ROM? Yes.
Did it help? No.

Have you tried using a USB drive? Yes but I didn't bother to make it bootable.
Why not? Because it's not lighting up on any of the USB ports and the USB keyboard also isn't detected.
Did you try these devices on another computer? Yes and, they function fine so it's something with the BIOS.

Have you tried using a floppy drive? No.
Why not? Because the TA990FXE is SATA only.

Have you tried using another saved profile? No.
Why not? Because none of them are what they should be. e.g. Profile 1 which is supposed to be the default BIOS settings with AHCI on is overclocking the CPU to 3.6 GHz.

Have you tried booting with the last known working settings in the BIOS? Yes.
Did it help? No.

Have you tried only using one stick of RAM? Yes.
Did it help? No
Have you tried a different slot? Yes.
Did it help? No.

Have you tried updating the BIOS from within W7 64? No.
Why not? Because I can not boot to W7 64 and I get the BSOD A5 whenever I try to do so.

Have you tried booting to safe mode? No.
Why not? Because during boot, I am given the choice of windows recovery (recommended) or start windows normally. It seemed like a bad idea to try to boot to safe mode rather than windows recovery.

Did you try windows recovery? Yes.
Did it help? No, it would do a BSOD A5 when it was trying to load windows recovery.

Did you try starting windows normally? No.
Why not? It seemed like a bad idea to try to boot normally rather than using windows recovery.

I am really at a loss on what to do at this point short of calling Biostar and requesting a new BIOS chip or doing a RMA. Neither of those things should be necessary though but, I just can not make the BIOS flasher see the BIOS file that I downloaded from the Biostar website (yes I am sure I downloaded the correct one). Has anyone else ever run into a problem like this with the BIOS flasher/bio-relife feature on a Biostar motherboard?

Yes, this problem still exists and it occurs regardless of whether or not ACPI is enabled or disabled in the BIOS.

The RAM was tested with Memetest with both sticks installed and there were no errors on a single pass.

With the HDD (hardrive) disconnected, I tried to boot from the W7 64 disc (yes this is a legitimate disc). Once Windows was "finished loading files", the BSOD came up so this rules out the HDD and the OS install as the issue. I doubt it's the RAM so that brings us back to the BIOS.

This error is also getting tossed out using a Windows XP PRO 32bit disc. With XP though, you can constantly hit F7 during boot to silently bypass the ACPI. Using a Bart's PEB (XP Prop SP3) disc, I got a new BSOD but it was related to having the SATA set to AHCI. Once I changed the SATA to IDE native in the BIOS, Bart's PC was able to fully load. I tired the F7 bypass with the Windows 7 64bit disc but it didn't work. It looks like you are no longer to bypass APCI since Vista. I know with XP, you can delete the "hiberfil.sys" file and it will stop this BSOD from coming back up. Since ACPI is required in Vista/W7 though I don't see that being an option. Even that doesn't make sense though despite it being a Microsoft fix as Microsoft states:

Quote:

The following information can help you debug a Stop 0x000000A5 error.

The cause of the Stop message is always errors in the ACPI BIOS. There is nothing that you can fix at the level of the operating system.

Quote:

0x000000011

The system cannot enter ACPI mode. There are many reasons for this, including:

The system cannot initialize the AML interpreter.

The system cannot find the Root System Description table.

The system cannot allocate a critical driver.

The system cannot load the Root System Description table.

The system cannot load device descriptor blocks.

The system cannot connect an interrupt vector.

The SCI_EN (system control interrupt enable request) cannot be set (see 0x00000001).

The ACPI Table checksum is incorrect.

ACPI is a hierarchical arrangement of tables, each one building upon the next to define the complete capabilities of the system and of every device in the system. ACPI starts by looking for the Root System Description table, which points to the next table, which points to the next table, and so on. Usually, the 0x000000011 error occurs because these tables are damaged or missing.

Quote:

0x000000006

A power resource is named, but there is no information available in the namespace for this resource.

Going by that and, the testing I have done it looks like it's definitely the BIOS. I have emailed Biostar but, does anyone have any idea about how to make the Biostaer flasher/bio-relife actually see the BIOS files I have burnt to a bootable disc?

Just a quick update. The USB porst don't appear to be damaged as I was able to CHKDSK my USB drive using my Bart's PEB (XP Pro SP3) disc. That should technically rule out the motherboard's hardware (or rather the SB) and the need for an actual RMA. That is of course assuming something isn't wrong with the actual BIOS socket on the motherboard.

Well how old is said board? If the BIOS corruption still persists, I say just RMA the board.

It's past the 30 day return point and, it's only been in service for a little over a month. If no one has any ides on how to reload the BIOS and, if Biostar is unable to direct me on how to do so, the only options left would be a new BIOS chip or an actual RMA.

For the sake of argument, I hooked up my HDD and booted to my Bart's PEB (XP Pro SP3) disc and looked at the drive contents. It has a "hiberfil.sys" file in the root directory. I have no idea why though as hibernation was disabled in the BIOS and wasn't turned on in Windows 7 64. In addition to not needing to be there, this file is eating up 6 GB of my disc.

I renamed it to "hiberfil.sys.old", rebooted, removed the Bart's PEB (XP Pro SP3) disc, and changed the SATA back to AHCI, but my HDD still tossed out the A5 BSOD. I told the HDD to boot normally and once the Windows animated loading screen appeared, it rebooted itself. I put the Bart's PEB (XP Pro SP3) disc back in, changed the SATA back to IDE native, and booted to Bart's. The "hiberfil.sys" file was still named "hiberfil.sys.old". In order to exhaust every possible option, I copied it to my "storage" partition (so I would have a just in case backup of it) and then deleted it from the OS partition. I then rebooted, removed the Bart's disc, changed the SATA to AHCI, but ti was the same thing. It tossed out the A5 BSOD using windows recovery and, rebooted on the loading screen when I tried starting windows normally.

The only other option I know of is to run "powercfg -h off" from a command prompt but, I can't do that from within Bart's as it is 32 bit and my W7 is 64 bit. Trying to use the actual "powercfg.exe" tosses out an error that it "is not a valid 32bit program".

I really don't know what else it could be at this point other than the actual BIOS or something with the BIOS socket. Am I correct in thinking I have ruled everything else out?.

Get in contact with Biostar Tech Support, and see what they have to say about it.... in my experience, they've usually been pretty responsive....

I did earlier today. I just wanted to exhaust ever possible option/solution while I am waiting on them to get back in touch with me. If it turns out to be something only they can solve, that's fine but I just wanted to do everything I possibly could and I was curious if this had ever happened to anyone else on one of their boards.

Get in contact with Biostar Tech Support, and see what they have to say about it.... in my experience, they've usually been pretty responsive....

I did earlier today. I just wanted to exhaust ever possible option/solution while I am waiting on them to get back in touch with me. If it turns out to be something only they can solve, that's fine but I just wanted to do everything I possibly could and I was curious if this had ever happened to anyone else on one of their boards.

Just wanted to do an update on this. It's apparently going to be a slow process with Biostar as I don't think they even read my email. The response came off fairly auto-generated based on keywords. Their email basically told me to test my hardware, try other hardware, and to use the F12 utlity to reflash the BIOS. I know they have to follow certain steps but, I already pointed out it wasn't hardware related and why and that there was no way for me to use the F12 utility and why along with numerous other details. I requested a new BIOS chip in my reply but, I'm sure they will just go to the next troubleshooting step instead of agreeing it's an issue with the BIOS. I can't exactly fault them for having to go step-by-step though but, it doesn't it make it any less frustrating lol.